Lesson in customer care that firms can follow to the letter

Client-handling specialists in many service providers have a hell of a lot to learn

ON THE lavatory wall of a colleague’s flat in Hong Kong hangs a framed letter. It is written on HSBC notepaper, and dated January 22nd, 1998.

“Dear Sir,” it begins. “Please note that we have had occasion to return your cheque due to insufficient funds in the above account. This state of affairs is most unsatisfactory and the practice of issuing cheques without first ensuring that there are sufficient funds to meet them must cease forthwith, otherwise it will be necessary for your account in our books to be closed.

“Yours faithfully, P Mandal, assistant manager customer deposits, Bangalore branch.”

In displaying this letter in such a prominent place, my colleague was seeking to amuse his visitors with its Indian-English verbosity. In reprinting it here, I have a grander purpose. For all its stiff wording, it is the best letter to a customer I’ve ever seen. It sums up everything that used to be good about banking, but which has got hopelessly lost. Indeed, if all bankers still behaved like P Mandal, there would have been no financial crisis.

For him, banking was a solemn matter, where prudence was all- important. In his world, there was none of the dodgy stuff that all banks now routinely engage in: pretending the customer is king while fleecing them if they go into the red, and investing their money in incomprehensible and ruinous financial instruments. Instead, recalcitrant customers were given a thorough telling-off – which made them behave better.

My colleague tells me that he has, indeed, ceased his unsatisfactory behaviour forthwith: he has not bounced a cheque since January 1998.

It all makes one wish P Mandal had been transported from Bangalore to the London HQ and made chief executive instead of Sir John Bond. The Indian banker would never in a million years have agreed to the £9 billion takeover of Household, the US subprime lender it bought in 2002. He would have cast one eye over the loan book with its millions of dodgy customers who could not afford their mortgages and said he wanted nothing to do with them.

But it is not just his prudence I like. It’s his writing style, too. Though somewhat pompous, it is short and to the point. And despite its threatening message, it is immaculately polite.

“This state of affairs is most unsatisfactory” is a delightful and useful phrase that deserves to be rehabilitated at once.

The same day I was inspecting the walls of my colleague’s lavatory so approvingly, I was e-mailed an exchange that had just taken place between a Financial Times reader and Comcast. She had sent a brief message to the cable operator complaining that she couldn’t find out how to get her mobile phone bill itemised.

The reply was everything the lavatory letter was not: disingenuous, unintelligent, emotionally incontinent, unhelpful and miles too long.

“We are very glad to have you as part of the Comcast family,” it began, unpromisingly. The idea that in signing up for an account with a mobile phone operator, one is not merely agreeing to share its airwaves but to share its genetic lineage is most disturbing.

The e-mail continued “ . . . and it is our privilege to provide you an exceptional and unparalleled customer service”. This is even worse – a combination of excessive bowing and scraping with excessive boasting, without conveying any meaning at all.

“Thank you for bringing this billing concern to our attention, Elizabeth”, it goes on. “Elizabeth”? How dare they? P Mandal would have had a stroke at such fresh familiarity.

“Rest assured that we will properly address the concern by making sure that the best resolution will be provided to suffice your overall satisfaction.”

I’m getting restive even typing this drivel out and so you will have to believe me that there are 500 more words of the same, including further apologies, further congratulations and wishes that Elizabeth have a nice day – without actually solving the problem in hand.

“We appreciate that you took time out from your busy schedule to share your concerns,” it said. But if they thought her schedule was busy, why did they think she would have time to read so much guff? Finally, the sign off: a first name and a title, “Comcast customer care specialist”. At last, something with meaning. The author of this reply has proved herself a specialist in “customer care” – a virtuoso at apology and making all the most fashionable noises.

The only problem is that there is no need for specialists in this area. Customers don’t want “care”. They just want their bills itemised.

– (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011)